Drzymała's wagon ( pl, wóz Drzymały) was a house on wheels built by peasant

Michał Drzymała Michał Drzymała (; 13 September 1857 – 25 April 1937) was a Polish peasant living in the Greater Poland region (or the Grand Duchy of Posen) under Prussian rule. He is a Polish folk hero because, after he was denied permission to build a hous ...

(1857-1937) as a protest against

Imperial Germany The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

's policy of

Germanization Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, people and culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nationalism went hand in hand. In ling ...

in its Polish territories. Drzymała was not only able to circumvent German building regulations by moving his home every day, but with his

wagon A wagon or waggon is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by draught animals or on occasion by humans, used for transporting goods, commodities, agricultural materials, supplies and sometimes people. Wagons are immediately distinguished from ...

-home, became a Polish

folk hero A folk hero or national hero is a type of hero – real, fictional or mythological – with their name, personality and deeds embedded in the popular consciousness of a people, mentioned frequently in folk songs, folk tales and other folklore; a ...

during the

Partitions of Poland The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 12 ...

. In 1886, by resolution of the

Prussian Landtag The Landtag of Prussia (german: Preußischer Landtag) was the representative assembly of the Kingdom of Prussia implemented in 1849, a bicameral legislature consisting of the upper House of Lords (''Herrenhaus'') and the lower House of Represent ...

, a Settlement Commission had been established to encourage

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

settlement in the Province of Posen and

West Prussia The Province of West Prussia (german: Provinz Westpreußen; csb, Zôpadné Prësë; pl, Prusy Zachodnie) was a province of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and 1878 to 1920. West Prussia was established as a province of the Kingdom of Prussia in 177 ...

. The Commission was empowered to purchase vacant property of the Polish

szlachta The ''szlachta'' (Polish: endonym, Lithuanian: šlėkta) were the noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth who, as a class, had the dominating position in the ...

and sell it to approved German applicants. The Prussian government regarded this as a measure designed to counteract the German "Flight from the East" (''

Ostflucht The ''Ostflucht'' (; "flight from the East") was the migration of Germans, in the later 19th century and early 20th century, from areas which were then eastern parts of Germany to more industrialized regions in central and western Germany. The ...

'') and reduce the number of Poles. In Polish eyes, the establishment of the Commission was an aggressive measure designed to drive Poles from their lands. While the campaign against Polish landownership largely missed its aims, it produced a strong opposition with its own hero, Drzymała. In 1904 he purchased a plot of land in Pogradowitz in the Posen district of Bomst, but found that the newly implemented Prussian ''Feuerstättengesetz'' ("furnace law") enabled local officials to deny him as a Pole the permission to build a permanent dwelling with an oven on his land. The law considered any place of stay a house if it stayed in one place for more than 24 hours. To get around the rule, he set himself up in a former circus caravan and for several years tenaciously defied in the courts all attempts to remove him. Each day, Drzymała moved the wagon a short distance, thereby exploiting the

loophole A loophole is an ambiguity or inadequacy in a system, such as a law or security, which can be used to circumvent or otherwise avoid the purpose, implied or explicitly stated, of the system. Originally, the word meant an arrowslit, a narrow verti ...

and avoiding any legal penalties, until in 1909 he was able to buy an existent farmhouse nearby. The case attracted publicity all over Germany. The German ''

Kulturkampf (, 'culture struggle') was the conflict that took place from 1872 to 1878 between the Catholic Church led by Pope Pius IX and the government of Prussia led by Otto von Bismarck. The main issues were clerical control of education and ecclesiastic ...

'' measures and the Colonization Commission ultimately succeeded in stimulating the Polish national sentiment that they had been designed to suppress.

References

"Nationalheld auf Rädern", Zeit Online, 2004, http://www.zeit.de/2004/26/A-PolBoden?page=all {{DEFAULTSORT:Drzymala's Wagon Prussian Partition National symbols of Poland Germany–Poland relations pl:Michał Drzymała#Wóz Drzymały

See also

References